The second biennial Boda Boda Lounge Project is a cross-continental video art project that practices creating an Africa without borders. Boda Boda Lounge is hosted by 15 arts organisations across the continent on the weekend of 18 – 20 November. The project invites African video artists, enthusiasts and radical dreamers to experience the audio visual musings of 30 artists from 11 different countries on the continent.

The theme of this year’s project, SuperPosition, an archaeology of the present, invited participating artists to dare a different reading of space and to imagine alternative channels of fluxes, crossings and entangling of energies and meaning. In response, Ezra Wube of Ethiopia, has shared Menged Merkato. Painstakingly compiled and visually exquisite, Wube explains that the work is “An architectural analysis and historical journey of the largest open-air market in Africa’s continuous resistance to change but also its resistance to stillness in the course of major political shifts”.

Kampire Bahana of Uganda takes a satirical jab at YouTube hair tutorials and the potential and possibilities of online spaces serving as a site of decolonial discussion in her piece Salooni/Hair. Her critical reflections of Black Consciousness thought sits productively alongside Weave Business, the work of South Africa’s own Sisipho Mase. These two works present radically different ideological propositions and we look forward to the conversations that they will no doubt spark in the various venues.

Indeed the Boda Boda Lounge programme is a kaleidoscope of moving images through which Africans create a unique moment to speak to each other and burrow into the future, like archaeologists.

Patrick Mudekereza, project co-organiser and Director of Waza, unpacks the allure of video art, ”The idea of Africa being the “heart of darkness” has guided the global audiovisual productions about the continent.   For me, video art more than any other format has the potential to challenge that machinery because it offers not only a sensorial or didactic experience, in a kind of enlightenment, but it can metamorphose our understanding of the world.”

The Boda Boda Lounge Project is a collaborative project between VANSA (South Africa), Waza (Congo DRC) and VAN Lagos (Nigeria). VANSA Director Molemo Moiloa unpacks the thinking behind the project, “The Boda Boda Lounge Project is an experiment in creative collaboration that embraces our limitations. Through exploring the images that surround us, working only with what we have, and sharing our collective expertise across borders, languages and contexts, Boda Boda Lounge is able to bridge differences and subvert impediments”.

In Johannesburg it will be hosted at the Afrikan Freedom Station, Shop 3, 91 5th Ave, Westdene, on Saturday 19 November from 18h00 to 21h00.

In Cape Town at the Greatmore Studios, 47 & 49 Greatmore Street, Woodstock, Saturday 19 November from 12h00 to 18h00 and in

Durban at the KZNSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood,.

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Elsewhere on the continent you can experience the project at the following venues:

VAN Lagos: Lagos, Nigeria

WAZA: Lumbumbashi, Republic of Congo

Addis School of Fine Art and Design:  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Medina:  Bamako, Mali

KZNSA Gallery:  Durban, South Africa

Greatmore Studios, Cape Town, South Africa

Kër Thiossane:  Dakar, Senegal

LES ATELIERS SAHM:  Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

Yole:  Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo

Accra[dot]Alt, Accra, Ghana

Nafasi Art Space:  Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

32 Degrees East:  Kampala, Uganda

aria (artist residency in algiers) in partnership with Espace d’art contemporain Espaco:  Algiers, Algeria

Logomatic  design and graphic art studio: Lusaka, Zambia

Rotonde Des Arts, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

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http://vansa.co.za